Laing accuses PLP of ‘using foreigners’

No one uses foreigners more for their advancement than Progressive Liberal Party(PLP)members, but condemns them more for political points, Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing charged yesterday.

“They know it and I know it,”said Laing while contributing to the mid-year budget debate in the House of Assembly yesterday.

“Foreigners support their cause. Foreigners are active participants in the development of the country when they are in office and they know it.

“When they boasted of the$30 billion in projects they said were in the pipeline, you check those projects, not a one had a Bahamian label on it. But yet they tell us we are the ones who are the promoters of foreigners.”

Laing added,”They took office and in less than two years one of their Cabinet ministers said, Mr. Deputy, that they had sold 15 percent more land to foreigners than the Free National Movement had and they boasted about it.

“So this is their rhetoric. No one talks more about the poor and average man than the PLP but acts, executes least on their behalf when they have an opportunity to do so.”

Laing pointed to the many Over-the-Hill areas of New Providence that are represented by PLPs, suggesting that while they(PLPs)were in office no transformation took place.

“Over-the-Hill has been Over-the-Hill for all of the time that they were in office,”he said.

“Twenty-five years(under Sir Lynden Pindling)and the five years(under Perry Christie)and Over-the-Hill is still the same Over-the-Hill, which they lament. One would have thought that a friend of the poor and average man would have transformed that situation.

“The improvements that happened in their schools and in their roads and in their physical infrastructure and to their personal circumstances happened under the Free National Movement. That is the truth.”

Laing said many PLP MPs are not poor today and did not grow up poor compared to the middle class lifestyles of most FNM MPs.

He said he lives with”the boys”in Mayfield Park.

“Compassion is not what you talk,”the minister said.”It is a deed and a virtue you display.”

Laing said many opposition members are”masters of talk.”

He claimed that while the PLP talks”we execute to bring benefits and relief to the people of this country.”

“Their every word these days–let nobody be mistaken about it–is about the next election. They’re salivating at that. I understand that. They want to replace us. No problem. No problem,”Laing said.

“I can tell you if the next election were the only thing we were looking at then there are some things we certainly, clearly would not do today. We’re thinking about the country and the future of this country.”